Overstreet: which gospel?

Thursday, January 7, 2016
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
    —Matthew 23:13-15 (ESV)
Quotation:
    We may look into a church, almost any church, and discover someone who, though he is offered a gospel of love, must subtly convert it into a gospel of hate before he can receive it. The gospel of love—with its emphasis upon brotherhood, equality before God, the dignity of every human being, and man’s social responsibility toward man—does not satisfy the lack that he urgently feels. That calls for something altogether different, for an assurance that he is superior, that he is right where others are wrong—a kind of cosmic teacher’s pet.
    ... Bonaro W. Overstreet (1902-1985), “For the Spirit’s Hunger,” part 2, “In the Beginning: the Need Felt“, in The PTA Magazine, v. XLVI, n. 2 (October, 1951), Chicago: National Parent-Teacher, Inc., 1951, p. 15 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 23:13-15; Ps. 50:16-20; Matt. 23:2-3; Rom. 2:19-23; Phil. 1:15
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, purify the Gospel in my mind and heart, so that it be not unrighteous. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah